FTC Launching Anti-Trust Probe Over Google Search, Ad Businesses

The Federal Trade Commission is on the verge of serving Google as part of a formal antitrust investigation into Google's Web dominance, according to sources speaking to the Wall Street Journal, with the requests for more information expected to be sent to Google "within days."

The WSJ's sources say that the FTC's investigation will focus on Google's advertising business and whether Google has been directing search users to its own services over the competition. As is typical with investigations like this, the FTC will eventually begin requesting information from other companies that deal with Google as well in order to get further information on how Google conducts its business.

Google has come under fire over the last year or so for its search- and ad-related business practices, with most of the activity taking place in Europe. The European Commission began an investigation in early 2010 after several of Google's competitors filed complaints against the company. Price comparison site Foundem and legal search engine ejustice both accused Google of limiting competition by keeping their search rankings low on an algorithmic level—the Commission later announced that it was opening a formal antitrust investigation into the allegations.

Microsoft soon followed with its own formal complaint against Google in the EU as well, accusing the search giant of favoring itself when growing its search, advertising, and content tools.

[partner id="arstechnica"]The US was slower than the EC to act, but several senators expressed concern earlier this year about Google's alleged anticompetitive practices. At that time, Senator Herb Kohl (D-WI) announced that the Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee would begin looking into complaints about Google's ranking system, vouching to "closely examine allegations raised by e-commerce websites that compete with Google that they are being treated unfairly in search ranking, and in their ability to purchase search advertising."

Google has repeatedly insisted that its goal is merely to serve users the most relevant content for their searches, not cater to the whims of businesses that may be running link farms or other content that may not be relevant to users. "It may seem obvious, but people sometimes forget this — not every website can come out on top, or even appear on the first page of our results, so there will almost always be website owners who are unhappy about their rankings," Google SVP Susan Wojcicki and VP Udi Manber wrote on the company's European Public Policy Blog in November. "We do everything we can to ensure that the integrity of our results isn’t compromised."

This investigation is different than other antitrust probes that Google has faced in the past in the US. Others have largely focused on acquisitions, such as Google's proposed acquisition of airfare search company ITA and mobile advertising firm AdMob. Both of those were eventually approved, though, so this may be the first time Google will be forced to deal with the full effects of a formal investigation.